[In the following review of Poems New and Collected, 1957-1997, Christian finds Szymborska's collected works in English an “essential” volume.]

“I'm working on the world,” says Polish poet Szymborska. In this new retrospective collection of her works, a “revised, improved edition.” It may seem superfluous to praise a Nobel Laureate in literature, but Szymborska is a splendid writer richly deserving of her recent renown. While it seems likely that the academy noticed her for her unflinching examination of torture and other wrongs inflicted by repressive regimes, what seems extraordinary about Szymborska is her humility, her openness to wonder. Her motto, she says in the Nobel lecture included in this volume, is “I don't know,” a surprisingly fruitful starting point. She is capable of stunning lyrical images (“0 swallow, cloud-borne thorn, / anchor of the air, / Icarus improved, / coattails in Assumption”), but she is less interested in poetic showiness than in miracles of survival: “I'll die with wings, I'll live on with practical claws.” She has no counterpart in English verse, except perhaps Stevie Smith, who shared with her a knowledge of the exhilarating power of a kind of serious laughter. This gathering in English of all the verse Szymborska wants assembled should be an essential purchase for all collections interested in literature.